The American Craft Beer Rumor Mill – July 31, 2013

Hey it’s Wednesday and it’s Rumor Mill Time…Word has it that Deschutes Brewery will be continuing to roll out more barrels! We’ll be bringing you what we know so far. Plus we’ve got some fast-breaking news from our friends at Victory Brewing and an update from Iron Maiden. We’ve also got three new Ninkasi releases that you’ll want to chase down. So fasten your seat belts everybody…THIS WEEK’S RUMOR MILL IS ON!

Iron Maiden Beer Hits Our Shores This Week (UK) – Artisanal Imports has let us know that Trooper Ale, the beer collaboration between Iron Maiden and Robinsons Brewery will be ready to ship starting this week. Iron Maiden’s brand-new Premium British Beer was personally designed and developed by vocalist Bruce Dickinson in collaboration with the Cheshire-based brewery, and it’s already garnered some reputation for having been briefly banned in Sweden, which we imagine the Iron Maiden boys just loved.

Deschutes Rolls Out More Barrels (Bend, OR) – Deschutes Brewmaster Cam O’ Connor recently checked in with Serious Eats and reflected on their growing barrel-aging program and on upcoming releases. According to Cam, they are up to 1,800 oak barrels that they can use for aging. He also disclosed that Deschutes will be readying their yearly sour beer, The Dissident, for its 2014 release.

Golden Road to Costco (Los Angeles, CA) – Our friend, John Verive, who writes for the Los Angeles Times as well as for his own excellent Beer of Tomorrow site, recently attended Brewbound’s touring Brew Talks series and reported that Golden Road‘s Meg Gill announced that they will be selling Golden Road 24-packs in 51 Southern California Costcos next month. Now that’s our kind of Costco!

Location, Location, Location (Downingtown, PA) – And it appears that the Victory Brewing Company has there’s. They’ve announced that they will be bringing their second brewpub, complete with on-premise brewing and a takeout beer component, to Kennett Square, PA. Called Victory at Magnolia, the newest location will accommodate a 250-seat restaurant with space for outdoor dining, and is targeted to open in the second quarter of 2014.

The Scene at New Glarus to Sour Soon (New Glarus, WI) – The long-planned brewery expansion at New Glarus Brewing Co. will soon begin. And when it’s done, the Wisconsin Journal is reporting that they’ll finally be able to begin large-scale production work “on a series of sour beers that so far have been released only in tiny, closely held batches.”

Three Rumor Mill Releases You Want to Look Out For

Our friends at Ninkasi Brewing have just released three new summertime draft-only beers and you should try to chase down all of them. Ninkasi Kölsch is a 4.5% ABV take on the Cologne, Germany favorite. Ninkasi Bohemian Pils is their take on the Bohemian-Style Pilsner and Eugene Esteem is their California Common. All three beers are part of Ninkasi’s Rare and Delicious Series (R&D) that was designed to capture the creativity of each member of Ninkasi’s brewing team – enabling each to design their own beer from start to finish.